E3: A Wish List For the Future of Video Games

We're a mere four days away from the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3). In these hallowed halls of video game promotion, our inner children will revel in the sheer delight of catching those brief, first glimpses of video gaming's immediate future. We will merely pretend to work as we secretly tune in for the press conferences hosted by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

Hell, who are we kidding? We're barely getting any work done just thinking about what digital delights await us. So in the interest of at least appearing to be productive, we've decided to share our E3 wish lists with you. The chances of any of these wishes coming true are about as good as Hideo Kojima announcing another Metal Gear. What are the odds of that happening?

Here's to wishing ...

1. Strong Launch Titles For Nintendo's Project Cafe Of all the wishes on this list, the first may be the most far-fetched. If Nintendo hopes to maintain the success they enjoyed with the Wii success when their new system, Project Cafe, is released in 2012, they will need to perform some serious reconciliation for their past sins.

They must cater to the hardcore gaming crowd. In other words, a launch lineup that consists or nothing but a Zelda re-hash, shovelware, and casual gaming titles aimed at trendy retirement homes ain't gonna cut it. Then again, it's going to take more than great lineup of Nintendo-brand games to save this princess.

Red Steel: a Wii launch title that never lived up to its promise.

2. Solid Third-Party Support for Project Café We're talking a full arsenal of third-party games over a wide spectrum of genres. Fighters, RPGs, shooters; we need it all, Nintendo. Let's see a Bioware exclusive on the Project Café. We're not buying another system just to find all the pieces of the Triforce and defeat Ganon...again.

Then again, we would buy Project Cafe sans third party support if you released...

The opening cinematic for

Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

3. Smash Bros. For Project Cafe Make sure to include online play that's worth a damn this time, okay?

Dead Island's

launch trailer.

4. Total Drama (Dead) Island The Dead Island trailer released early this year excited the gaming world with a promise of an engrossing and heart-wrenching dynamic narrative. Fast forward to a few months later, we learn the game features giant, charging zombies in strait jackets, a playable character "Sam B," who is both a rapper and possesses super strength, and island jury-rigged interpretation of a Lightsaber.

So much for that Walking Dead-esque epic. Hopefully their new footage at E3 will display some of the dramatic elements so heavily touted in the title's marketing.

Opening video from

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner

5. Zone of the Enders 3 Fine. No Metal Gear Solid 5. Well, that means we better see a new installment of the Zone of the Enders space-mech combat series. Fans have been begging for this since the release of The 2nd Runner way back in 2003. It's time we see sparks fly as giant Orbital Frames trade paint and metal in glorious HD. I need my Japanese mech fix, and that Steel Battalion Kinect game, or a Gundam skin on Dynasty Warriors isn't going to cut it.

6. Better 3DS Support So it was the worst Nintendo hardware launch since the Gamecube. Whatever, let's make consumer feel silly for even thinking all they need is Angry Birds. Nintendo can do just that by announcing a strong line of upcoming 3DS titles, including original IPs and new adventures for old favorites that truly utilize the system's impressive technology. This is going to require a little bit more than a few N64 remakes with slightly smoother pixels and some depth of field.

The

Assassins Creed: Brotherhood

trailer from E3 2010.7. Give Ezio A Break

Ubisoft has revealed Ezio will be 52 years old in the upcoming

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

. This man needs to rest.

Assassin's Creed 3

, the next installment of the main series, will need a new free-running protagonist, timeframe, and place. Let's see some hidden blades unsheathed in Samurai-Japan, The French Revolution, or Cold War Russia.

Link from

The Legend of Zelda

in

Soulcalibur 2.

8. Soulcalibur 5 Guest Character AnnouncementsSoulcalibur has a history of including playable characters from other video games (Link from The Legend of Zelda and Heihachi Mishima from Tekken) and popular cultures (Darth Vadar from Star Wars and Spawn from the long-running comic series of the same name). With Soulcalibur 5 right around the corner, we're expecting some tantalizing character announcements. If it were up to us, there would be three, system-specific characters: Travis Touchdown representing Nintendo, Raiden for the PS3 and (naturally) Master Chief bringing the Xbox 360 love.

The 2010 E3 trailer for

Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

9. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Downloadable Content That Doesn't Cost an Arm and a Leg and Another Arm Let's face facts. Capcom's fast-paced brawler, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a fantastic game that runs a little low on playable stages and characters. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 had 56 characters in the roster. Part three sits at 38; and that's with the two characters already available as downloadable content. We need more, Capcom! Just do all us fighters a solid and don't charge us the price of a brand new game to fully flesh out the one we already paid for.

10. A New Intellectual Property That Makes Us Count Down the Day to Release Day There will always be another Call of Duty. Bungie or no Bungie, you can bet your sticky grenades that there will always be another Halo. If there's one thing we crave from E3 this year, it's something we've never seen before. Give us a new gameplay mechanic. Give us a new character to obsess over. Give us the video game we don't even know we want.